At first an amateur singer in his native London, Leonard Osborn worked as a chemist in a silk-printing mill before joining the professional chorus of D’Oyly Carte in the mid-1930s. After his début with the company in a small part in Yeomen of the Guard in 1937, he had by 1939 sung The Defendant in Trial By Jury, Francesco in The Gondoliers, and Leonard Meryll in Yeomen. An RAF flight-lieutenant during the Second World War, in 1946 Osborn returned to D’Oyly Carte where, until his retirement in 1959, his many role included Tolloller in Iolanthe, Fairfax in Yeomen, Marco in The Gondoliers, Ralph Rackstraw in HMS Pinafore, Nanki-Poo in Mikado, Frederic in Pirates, and the Duke of Dunstable in Patience.
